Mona Lisa (Inspired by Build God And Then We'll Talk)
by auka
Summary: This is a short story I wrote for an English assignment. It is based on P!ATD and is written in the Third Person/Omniscent form
1. Chapter 1

**Mona Lisa **

Maria tactfully put the murder weapon aside. She smiled a small smile to herself. For a moment, she was laced with pure disgust. However, that feeling quickly went away because she knew that to get away with this crime, she couldn't let her emotions get the better of her. Maria had been bound to her secret but had never been forced to kill for the protection of it. He had figured out her secret and so she dealt with him. The acts she committed weren't necessarily legal or appreciated by the general community or public. The men of the town over might be appreciative of Maria's services but it was not exactly something they'd be proud to go bragging to their friends. Maria had done an exceptional job up to this point of keeping her secret. If only Jessie hadn't figured it out. It was unfortunate that she couldn't keep her boyfriend around and at this moment, she shed a single tear for him. Her line of work had taught her not to become too attached to anyone and Maria knew that she had broken her only rule on the day that she first met Jessie.

~ Two days later

Maria sat in the police detective's office as she recalled the succession of events to the police chief. Two days ago, she had arrived at her boyfriend's house to find him dead with a fatal stab wound to his chest. "I just don't know who would do this," Maria said with a sob. The police chief looked at her and asked her if she was positive. "Yes," Maria nodded, lying with the perfection of a trained actress. "We'll notify you if we make any headway into our investigation, Maria," the police chief said. Maria smiled and thanked the police chief. And then just for a moment, the police chief saw something in her smile. He couldn't quite describe the tell – tale sensation he got, but what he saw in her smile reminded him of the Mona Lisa painting.

~ Two days later

Maria had the entire Lakewater Tower town in the palm of her hand and she knew it. Everyone figured she was a nice enough girl but didn't bother to pry as did her boyfriend, Jessie. But then again, Jessie wasn't from Lakewater Tower. Jessie had come a couple of years ago from a small and quaint neighborhood in Toronto after the death of his parents. He was from the kind of town where everyone knew everything about every neighbor and ultimately this was probably Jessie's downfall, Maria thought as she played the role of grieving girlfriend at Jessie's funeral. Maria was holding the funeral at her manor and practically the entire town turned out for the event to pay their respects and to console the seemingly grieving girlfriend. "Hello Mr. Daniels, Mrs. Knicks, Mr. Hanks, Mr. Coligny," and so on and so on the greetings went. At one point Maria nearly yawned after she received her hundredth condolence. "I wish this would all end," she said out loud but to no one in particular. Of course, everyone thought that she just wished that Jessie wasn't dead. No, Maria knew Jessie was dead; she had him lain in plain sight in the front of the living room with an open casket. Jessie was definitely dead and he wasn't coming back. For a moment, Maria felt herself just maddening at the sight of him. She thought to herself, "Why did he have to be so idiotic? I didn't choose this lifestyle, it chose me – he shouldn't have pried so much." Maria could sense her façade dropping and she quickly painted her face back on. Her clients had always noticed she was good at this sort of thing. After all, she couldn't be brooding at her job. Though, she did have her moments.

The season was winter so Maria got up to close the living room windows. All afternoon she had been feeling a bit of a draft in the room. The strange thing was that though all the windows were closed, Maria still felt a slight chill. Maria almost attributed the sensation to being almost preternatural until she realized how silly this notion was. Maria was allowed to be more closed off than she usually was. Her neighbors just attributed it to her sadness. Maria heard snippets of words from her guest's conversations, for she had always possessed very keen ears. From Ms. Katherine, Maria heard, "These coral curtains…," in which Maria guessed that Ms. Katherine was admiring the very stylish curtains that she had set up in the windows of the foyer. Maria also overheard Ms. Sandy speak of, "… cat food." It was only commonplace for her to worry about her cats back home and whether or not she'd remembered to feed them. Ms. Sandy was the town's resident cat lady but she'd deny it a thousand times over. She was also beginning to become a bit senile. Maria nearly laughed out loud as she listened to the pointless chatter of her guests. "It is just like people to come to a funeral and admire my curtains or wonder if they'd remembered to feed their cats," Maria nearly spat, then laughed. If this was the case, Maria figured that maybe she wasn't so stone – hearted after all. Maria then felt the chill move away from her rapidly. Isolated, Maria finally began to cry – truthfully letting herself sob for the first time since she had murdered Jessie four days prior.

Dalia wandered over to the dead man's casket. She was a precocious little five year old that had a hard time playing with the other kids. She was smart and noticed a lot of things that ordinary people wouldn't realize – namely, the transparent man walking around the living room clearly yelling at the guests. Dalia thought it odd that she was the only person that could see him and Jessie practically jumped when he caught Dalia staring. "So, you can see me?" Jessie asked in a purely innocent way as he bent down so as to get eye level to little Dalia. The little girl simply nodded for she was not much of a talker.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Dalia," she replied, looking into his warm green eyes.

"I need you to do something for me."

Jessie slipped something weighty into Dalia's hand and asked her to reach into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing in the casket. Dalia found the piece of paper in his pocket that said, 'Maria did it." The bloody knife Jessie had given to Dalia was enough for the police chief to convict Maria of manslaughter. With that, the transparent man disappeared and Dalia never spoke to him again. The slight chill also went missing from the room, Maria noticed. She had an odd feeling; as if something greater had triumphed over her. She didn't feel bad for herself, she felt bad that Jessie ever had the dishonor of making her acquaintance. Maria had cried for the death of Jessie before, but this time it came from the heart; from a place you would know that she was no longer hiding a huge secret. And the whole town saw it in her bland face – a face that was the exact opposite of the Mona Lisa. And right now, Maria loved Jessie with every fiber of being in her body.


	2. Dear Maria (Jesse's POV)

**Dear Maria **

"Maria let's just have some rationality and talk this over," I said nervously to my deranged – looking girlfriend Maria.

"I've talked enough, Jessie, you know too much about me already." Maria replied calmly.

"You're going to regret this."

"My only regret is you." With that, Maria – the only woman I'd ever loved besides my mother – stabbed me. The world went black and I knew no more. My dear Maria.

~ Four days later

I came to and I was in a casket in the middle of Maria's living room. Well, I assumed I was dead so I guess I wasn't expecting much. Apparently, my funeral was going on at exactly the moment I chose to wake up. Not surprisingly, my parents weren't here. Dead people can't go to funerals unless it's their own. The story of my life. I was clearly sitting up in my casket and if no one saw this, I figured that I must be a ghost. Was it because of Maria that I didn't go towards the light at the end of the tunnel, as they say?

"So I must want some sort of vengeance." I spied my dear Maria in the corner of the living room quietly mumbling to herself. If there's one thing my mother taught me, it's never to trust women mumbling in the corner. I began to walk around the room in order to edge closer towards Maria. She seemed to have been chuckling. Maria was never the warmest person for the year that I'd known her, but I didn't know that she was this cold. I walked away from her with a look of disgust on my face. I loved Maria dearly but if she didn't have the audacity to be sorrowful at my funeral, I would not hold back on getting my vengeance. And oh, would it be sweet. So, if I was a ghost, I figured that I could maybe traverse the spiritual world somehow to make contact with the funeral guests. I would try anything to wipe that smug look off of Maria's face. Where was my ghost whisperer when I needed one?

I am sure I would look clinically insane if anyone could see me at the moment. I was walking around the room yelling angrily into people's faces and pointing in the direction of Maria, who seemed to shiver as if there was a draft in the room. I guessed that I would have to try a new tactic if I wanted someone to pick up on the disgruntled ghost in the room. Just then I remembered that Maria had murdered me in her basement and used a knife to stab me. It's a funny feeling to remember the day you were murdered. I thought it wasn't too much of a long shot to hope that she had kept the bloody knife. I think well when I speak out loud to myself and no one could hear me anyway so I began a deductive reasoning monologue.

"Maria would have been too busy these past four days to throw out the murder weapon."

"She would have had to keep the knife but tidy up the basement and hide it where not even the police chief would think to look."

"Before Maria left the house she would always paint her face and put on her jewels."

Then and there it dawned on me that the one place the police chief wouldn't think to look for a murder weapon would be a woman's jewelry box. Believe me, the officers in this town didn't think women capable of anything but I knew otherwise, especially when it came to Maria. I ran upstairs with the eagerness of a little child and successfully found the knife. The knife wasn't overwhelmingly drenched in blood after all, but there was a spot that Maria missed when cleaning it. A single spot of blood and her smudged fingerprint were the only traces of murder left on the otherwise clean knife. I am not entirely sure how she could have kept this hidden in the same house where she committed my murder, but hey, there are a lot of things I don't know about Maria. I took what would be my last look at Maria's bedroom – her elaborate evening wear and her gallons of makeup, all for her clients. How much of it was ever for me?

I tucked the knife into my pocket for fear that it would be too extreme for me to just go and wave a knife in a person's face. I think I'd faint at the sight of that. Right that moment, I didn't need people to fear me; I needed someone to listen to me. As I headed back downstairs and resumed my usual tactics I saw a small girl child staring at me in my casket. She seemed odd for her age and couldn't have been more than age six at the most. There was nothing incredibly unusual about her except for the fact of how hard she was staring at my dead body. You haven't experienced a weird situation unless you are watching someone watch your dead body. At this point, the little girl turned around and stared pointedly in my direction. She didn't just stare in my general direction but directly _at me._

I made my way over to the little girl and knelt in front of her. She didn't appear to be fazed by me as I cleared my throat and began to talk to her.

"So you can see me," I asked the little girl. She simply nodded. I guess she wasn't much of a talker.

"What's your name?" I asked her.

"Dalia." She replied in a brief manner.

"I want you to do something for me."

I discreetly slipped the knife into little Dalia's hand and I knew she understood what I was trying to tell her. For, I noticed that Dalia had a precocious air about her. She seemed to be the smaller version of Maria – in knowing things that other people didn't know. I only hoped that little Dalia would grow up to use her secrets for good and not evil. I whispered in her ear for her to reach into the jacket pocket of my dead body for a slip of paper. The bloody knife and the paper that said, "Maria did it," would be all the conviction I'd need. With that, Dalia proudly held up the paper so everyone at the funeral could see – especially the police chief and Maria. The secretive smile on Maria's face was wiped away immediately. The shock on her face would be akin to the face you'd make if you ever saw the Mona Lisa frowning. I went towards the light, finally at peace. I didn't have a single ounce of love left in me for my once dear Maria.


End file.
